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I wouldn't normally pass on a speculative theory from an anonymous blog but given that I do know who is the person behind the pen name I think that this one is worth at least considering. The speculation is that those excellent results that just posted, off the back of their apparently having got to grips with mobile advertising, might not be quite all everyone thinks they are. But please do note, this is entirely speculative and should be considered as just that, speculation.

The basic thesis is that Facebook isn't driving greater sales to its advertisers: but it is driving a greater number of clicks to them. As a result, in a few months time, as retailers realise that that greater number of clicks isn't leading to greater sales they will then decide to reduce their Facebook advertising. For of course sales, not clicks, are the aim of the whole advertising game. The core of the argument is here:

I would characterise the FB mobile adverts as intrusive (taking up chunks of the stream), and not at all relevant as far as I can see (I wasn't even vaguely interested in their subjects). I'd also note that their hotspot - the area of the screen where tapping takes you to the advert's link - is huge.

OK, the ads a large part of the real estate of the screen on a mobile.

What I think Facebook has done, very successfully, is to make most of their (hundreds of millions of) active mobile users click on adverts in the stream. Most of these clicks have been accidental.

Given the size of that ad and of the hotspot, some substantial portion of those clicks are in fact by mistake.

If I'm right - and this is just an educated guess, so I could be massively wrong - in 1-2 more quarters advertisers will be able to see that the surge in mobile clicks does not translate into, say, actual purchases traceable back to the adverts. At that point the value of a Facebook mobile click will become more apparent, and mobile ad revenue will plummet.

As I say, knowing who it is behind that pen name I would confirm that this is at least an educated guess: as we both admit, whether it's a correct one will have to wait for more evidence.

I think I prefer to think that Facebook has cracked the secret of getting good mobile ads in front of people who really do want to click on them and do. But while that's what I want to think I'm not certain enough that it's true to want to reject this idea just yet.

So, a question for those of you who do use Facebook on your mobiles. Are you finding that you are clicking on ads by mistake, just because of the size of the ads in relation to the size of the screen? I will reveal that this often happens to me looking at any website at all on a mobile but I have famously fat fingers anyway. What would be interesting is, although it would be purely anecdata, is whether you think this is happening more often on Facebook mobile than on other mobile websites. Comments are open for your views.